Honey and Mumford Learning Style

 

Honey and Mumford Learning Style

The learning style made by Peter Honey and Alan Mumford in 1989, defines four steps for learning style demonstration as activities, reflectors, theorists, and pragmatics, but it is possible for one person to be both the reflector and the theorist (Armstrong,2006). They suggested that many of the people follow only one or more of these and different learning styles has to be suited to particular style(Rosewell, 2005).

Figure 1 - Honey and Mumford Learning Style

Source: Rosewell (2005), Networked living: exploring information and communication technologies

 

Table 1: stages of Honey and Mumford, Learning style

Stage of the Learning cycle	Details of the stage
Activities	learn best from experience
Reflectors	learnt best rom observations and reflections
Theorists	learn at the abstract conceptualization level
Pragmatists	learn best from actual work experience or trying new skills

 source: Armstrong, (2006) A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practicey

Video 1: Honey and Mumford Learning Style

source : YouTube

According to Honey (2000), this cycle is aiming to follow the outcomes with their learning style.

•           Provides organizing and planning basics
•          What to learn, what to do better/differently for consequence
•          Share exiting learnings with others
•          Quality checking of learnt
•          Apply and transfer learnt to different circumferences
•          Move to how people learn than what they learn concept

To become a more effective learner, it is recommended to engage with each stage of the cycle, but not to conclude only from the activities learning or reflector stage (Rosewell, 2005). This learning style is widely used in management training and education (Maric, et.al, 2015). Honey and Mumford’s intention to learners is to be proficient for all the stages but not one or two (Penger & Tekavcic,2009). It is possible for one person to be reflector and theorist other one can be an activist and pragmatist or even theorist and pragmatist and any other combination of it (Armstrong, 2006). With the debates of each, Honey and Mumford learning cycle is introduced by smoothing Kolb’s learning cycle and management level that learning can align to the style properly than student learning. 

A research done to measure the suitable learning styles for the Slovenian Universities among 1042 students from three different universities, including University of Ljubljana, University of Maribor, and University of Primorska, the result was as follows (Maric, et.al, 2015).

Figure 2 Reliability coefficient

Source: Differences in Learning Styles-A comparison of Slovenian Universities(2015)

As in the table 1 shows, the reliability coefficient is acceptable for each stage of the learning cycle which proved that Honey and Mumford, learning style is in acceptable level for college students.

Tertiary and vocational education commission Sri Lanka is a local government body who measures standards of technical and vocational training courses and they specially mentioned that the technical trainings must be with hands-on practices considerably higher than theory since they identified that theorists, activities, reflectors, and pragmatics makes more skillful employees to the market (tvec_guidance, 2021). Hence TVEC is also align their standards and certification to the Honey and Mumford learning cycle.

According to all the research outcomes and thoughts and debates of subject expertise, it is important to identify most suitable learning styles by management of the organization according to the environment of the business to achieve their goal and Honey and Mumford learning cycle is a good choice for develop though experience and hands-on practices. 

 

 

 

 

References

1.Armstrong, M. (2006) A Handbook of human resource management practice. 11th ed. London, Kogan Page, Ltd.

2. EPM(2020) [online].Available at:<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-92dIFiN_p8&list=RDCMUC2tSqHvaHtmYl6XYBD9fJhg&index=1>, [Accessed on 6th August 2021].

3.Honey, P. & Mumford, A. (2000). The learning styles helper's guide. Maidenhead: Peter Honey Publications Ltd.

4. Maric M, Penger S., Todorovic I. and Durica N.(2015), Differences in learning styles-A comparison of Slovenian Universities, Academic Education and Research Centre, Elsevier, Greece. 

5. Penger, S., & Tekavcic, M. (2009). Testing dunn & dunn's and honey & mumford's learning style theories: The case of the Slovenian higher education system. Management, 14(2), 1-20.

6. Rosewell J. (2005). Learning styles, Networked living: exploring information and communication technologies, The Open University, p. 5. 

7. Tertiary and vocational education commission Sri Lanka (TVECSL) (2021), TVEC Guidance [online], Technical and vocational education and training guide, available at: < https://nvg.gov.lk/TVEC_GUIDE/pdf/Western%20Province.pdf>, [Accessed on 6th August 2021].